


we are not born for departure

by danishsweethearts



Series: upside down and inside out [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Age Swap, Angst, Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24280939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danishsweethearts/pseuds/danishsweethearts
Summary: Bruce Wayne dies.Life goes on, whether his family wants it to or not.
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd, Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Damian Wayne & Tim Drake
Series: upside down and inside out [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686565
Comments: 8
Kudos: 155





	we are not born for departure

**Author's Note:**

> okay disclaimer: i am not good at writing emotions. the only ones i can write successfully are Anger and Gay Pining so i don't actually know what i'm doing writing this fic but uh, enjoy

When his father dies, Damian forgets how to feel. 

When his father dies, Damian is in Chicago, watching the sky light up. This is Justice League business, meaning it is not Damian’s business, meaning that Damian is in Chicago, meaning he is not with Batman and will never be with Batman again.

When his father dies, Damian finds out because the world  _ shudders _ and then, twenty-five minutes later, Superman lands in front of him.

“Marid,” he says, his face creased in sorrow. “I… You have to return to Gotham.”

He pauses, trying to compose himself. Damian simply waits.

“I’m so sorry, Damian,” Superman says.

What reason would the saviour of the world have to personally chauffeur him back to Gotham, Damian asks himself. What would make the saviour of the world look so sorrowful? What would prompt him to deliver an apology in person?

Damian is not an idiot. 

“Batman is dead,” he says, testing out the way the words sit in his mouth. They are sharp. Wrong.

Clark’s eyes fill with tears. “I’m sorry, Damian,” he says again. 

_ I heard you the first time, _ Damian thinks. He does not say it, because this is the saviour of the world he is speaking to. He supposes it is good that telepathy is not on the extensive list of abilities that Superman has.

Clark says, “You can have a moment. If you need,” and Damian finds that he does not. He does not need or want for anything. He does not feel anything at all.

“No,” he replies. “We should go.” Gotham is waiting. Gotham without Batman is waiting.

Clark stares at him. Clark Kent, the investigative reporter, the saviour of the world, the everything in between, has known Damian for longer than nearly anybody else in the superhero community. He has known Damian for almost as long as Batman has known— _ knew _ —Damian. 

Damian wonders what Clark is seeing, when he looks at him. This is a gaze with the weight of years and years of knowledge behind it, and Damian wants to ask  _ what do you see? Who are you looking at? _

It is a stupid, childish impulse, but for a moment, Damian wants to run into his embrace and ask what he should do. Ask Superman, always reliable and always untouchable, to tell him what he is supposed to feel.

He does not do that. He simply lets Clark wrap an arm around him and take him to Gotham. Take him home.

* * *

They touch down in front of Wayne Manor. There is a welcoming party assembled and waiting for them. 

Clark releases Damian from his hold, and draws back slightly. Perhaps he means to give Damian some space, or simply to be polite. The gesture and sentiment are both sound, but Damian finds that it leaves him feeling harrowingly…  _ alone, _ facing down the rest of his family, with his heart frozen in him.

Cassandra runs towards him. He remembers himself and opens his arms just as she runs into them. She is shuddering. He feels how tightly she holds him, feels how she buries her face into his chest. As she shakes in his embrace, he feels all of her overwhelming grief, and none of his own. Poor Cassandra. She… she had loved Father.  _ Damian _ had loved Father. Why does he feel nothing?

He looks at the rest of his family as they draw nearer. Alfred’s face is composed, but there is sorrow in his every movement, in his every breath. Timothy’s eyes are red and blooshot; he walks as if he has no idea how he is still on his feet.

Jason’s expression is blank. 

Damian closes his eyes.

“Welcome back, Master Damian,” Alfred says quietly. “I wish your return was under… happier circumstances,”

Damian keeps his eyes closed, but he nods in Alfred’s direction. “Thank you, Alfred,” he murmurs in response. “It is… good to see you.”

He has not been here in so long.

Alfred says, his voice trembling, “Your father… his body is in the Cave. We have identified it already, but if you wish to…”

“Don’t,” Cassandra says, mumbling into Damian’s shirt. “Don’t go. Don’t look. It’s—Damian, it’s so  _ awful.” _ She sobs, hugging him even tighter, as if she meant to never let him leave from this spot again. 

She is most likely right. There are some things nobody ever needs to see, but Damian is no stranger to death, and he is no stranger to his father.

“Cassandra,” he says quietly, smoothing a hand over her hair. “Please,”

Cassandra sobs again, pulling him tighter. Damian can feel all of the power in her frame: all of that pent-up emotion, all of that desvastating hurt. If Cassandra did not want him to leave then there would be no way for Damian to move, but slowly, barest bit by barest bit, she draws back.

The loss of her embrace leaves him feeling even more alone.

With feet made out of stone, and a family made out of grief trailing behind him, Damian makes his way to the cave. He remembers with a start that he had not thanked Clark for his assistance, and suddenly he has a reason to turn around. To walk out of this house that will always be home and will never be the same again. To walk back into the sunshine and not look back.

He has paused in his movement. So has everyone else.

They must take it as hesitation, because Timothy drifts closer and murmurs, “I don’t think it’s worth it.”

He sounds utterly exhausted. He curls his fingers into the back of Damian’s shirt and Damian vividly remembers, once upon a time, doing the same to Bruce. There is an absolute desperation in that gesture. A quiet tugging. A quiet pleading.

Damian has to see the body. He has to, because even now he thinks of his father and thinks of a smudge against the moon, a shadow on the horizon. He does not think  _ dead.  _ He needs to make it real and tangible for himself, because if he does, then maybe he will finally feel something. Maybe he will cry, or scream, or breakdown, or do anything except stand there and feel numb.

He pulls away from Timothy.

The walk down the stairs has never been so long. The Cave has never been so quiet.

At the bottom there is a coffin and inside the coffin there is a man. Damian approaches, and he feels like he had when he had first stepped into Gotham: on the precipice of a new way of existence entirely. Balanced on a knife’s edge, knowing that no matter which way he fell, he would return from the experience an entirely foreign person.

His father’s face is cold and still. Of course it is. He is dead.

Damian flinches at the thought.

He draws nearer to the coffin, and nearer still, until he is finally standing over it. He has become aware in the previous few moments that his procession has dropped off; not a single member of his family has accompanied him here.

He does not begrudge them, or does not want to, at least. He understands. Most of them have probably seen this more times than they can bear, and they  _ had  _ warned him; he cannot hold it against them. Still.

He feels very. 

Lonely.

Abandoned, perhaps. Betrayed.

Scared.

Again he is a child, again he has just been torn from the only home he has ever known and brought to another country and another city and another parent. He remembers the loneliness and fear that had struck him the moment his mother had let go of his hand, and it all comes rushing back now. He is not foolish enough to think he had ever left it behind, but it had been kept at bay. 

He could never have seen this coming. He could never have expected his defenses to be torn through so effortlessly.

Reaching out a hand, he brushes some fingers down the side of his father’s face. Cold, cold, cold. There is not a single hair out of place, but Damian smooths it down anyway, tucking away imaginary wayward strands and feeling the cold spread from his fingers to the rest of him.

“Father,” he says quietly. “It is time to wake up,”

_ This is pitiful, _ he thinks.  _ This cannot be happening, _ he thinks again. 

_ Father, open your eyes,  _ he thinks, one last time.

No response. He closes his eyes, inhales deeply, and then adds, “Please.”

When again, there is no response, it sets in. There has never been a request Damian has made with the full use of his manners that has gone unfulfilled by his father.

Batman is dead. Damian’s heart goes with him.

* * *

Cass hates it in the Manor. 

There are more people living here right now then there have been in years, and she can’t stand it. She’s spent so many years hoping that her family would finally come back together, and now that most of them are here, she can’t stand it at all. Every time she wakes up in Wayne Manor without Bruce Wayne, something inside of her breaks. This is not a home. This is not her home.

It would help if any of her family would talk to her. Or to each other. Or at all. The silence is the worst. She hates silence. She hates feeling all of these things and not being able to express them. She hates knowing that everyone else is in the same position but none of them will  _ talk. _

“I miss him,” she says into the empty dining room. 

“I miss him,” she tells the rose garden.

“I miss him,” she sighs into her teacup. 

It doesn’t chase the silence away. It doesn’t make her feel better. The echo of her voice just amplifies everything; she misses him so much more and she feels so much lonelier and the quiet is so much more overwhelming. 

The only times it’s even somewhat bearable is when Damian comes to find her, or she goes to find him, and they sit in miserable silence together. Sometimes he lets her curl into his side, like when they were younger and Cass’ only protection against the big wide world was Damian and… Damian and…

And him.

And now it’s just Damian. And only sometimes. Most of his time, Damian spends down in the Cave with Alfred, talking about contingency plans and the cowl and the Justice League and cover-ups and funerals and other terrible things. 

As for the others…

Tim is the first one to leave the Manor. She can’t blame him. Tim’s even worse with silence than she is. 

The night before he leaves, he and Jason have an argument so loud that Cass can hear it in her room, a floor above them. She’s never heard Tim yelling before. Jason yells a decent amount, but Tim’s doesn’t raise his voice in anger; hearing them fight is awful. This isn’t silence, but it’s much worse.

And then the next morning, Tim is gone. 

Steph hasn’t talked to any of them. She must’ve found out somehow, but Cass doesn’t know how. She hopes it was Tim who told Steph, but… something tells her otherwise. 

Cass doesn’t like to think about it. It feels too much like before. Like Steph is a ghost again. 

It’s worse now, if anything. It’s like her whole family have become ghosts. It is her and Alfred and Damian and Jason in a giant house, and she has never felt more alone. Maybe she is the ghost, this time.

Then Jason and Damian have a fight. Except it’s not really a fight, because Jason is yelling, and Damian is not yelling back. Damian always yells back. And this time he doesn’t. This time Cass watches as Jason gets angry, and watches as Damian… doesn’t. It’s terrifying. Hearing Tim raise his voice had been awful but hearing Damian not respond to an argument is even worse, and when Cass pulls Jason out of the lounge and away from Damian and his stony silence, she’s shaking.

“Cassie,” Jason says, his voice scraped hoarse, “he’s alive. You have to believe me,”

She doesn’t believe him. Not entirely, at least. But she remembers Tim’s yelling and Damian’s silence, and she knows that if she tells Jason  _ no _ as well, he’s going to run off and do something stupid.

“I… I want to believe you,” she says, because that  _ is  _ entirely true. She wants to believe him so desperately.

Jason’s eyes shine with tears. He’s shaking as well. 

When he asks her to leave with him, Cass thinks about how Steph is a ghost and how Tim is words on a screen and how Damian is a statue, and she agrees. She can’t stay here. She can’t live in the terrifying silence Bruce has left behind anymore. She refuses to live in silence ever again.


End file.
